Teachers of Information Culture Training at the Information Technologies Department

Starodubova Y.A.

Russia, Kemerovo,
Kemerovo State Academy of Arts and Culture

The transition to the era of information Society presupposes a free orientation of the individual in information environment and comprehensive using all that is acquired and collected by the mankind.

Generating and using the information is a current environment of every person and information culture is an indivisible component of the personality, the condition of its self-realization. The systematized sum of special knowledge, abilities, providing individual information activity, gains the same significance as the fundamental groundings of modern education.

In the process of work schools and libraries have acquired a certain experience in forming information culture. However they limit their activities only by popularization of information knowledge. It is more enlightening work than otherwise and at that very chaotic. It results in a low level of information culture in the community. Questioning the library staff involved in information culture training and observations of the lessons let us make a conclusion that most specialists experience difficulties for preparing the lessons and in their process according to the librarians' opinion they lack special knowledge of psychology and pedagogics and practical experience. It results from the fact that educational course "Information Culture" is very limited as it gives a review of problems and an idea of forms and methods of work with a certain group of students.

That is why there is an urgent necessity to train information specialists of higher level. And first of all the training specialist-teaching "information culture" is needed by schools, libraries, higher educational establishments. Thus Kemerovo State Academy of Arts and Culture tries to train specialists of this kind at the Information Technologies Faculty. The presented variant is a result of a long-termed research and practical work. A principal conception is formulated and a typical program of the course "Information Culture Foundations" (the author is Professor, D.Sc. - N.I.Gendina) is worked out. This program is intended to different categories of students. The previous stages resulting in this program were: the studying of the library staff in the Kemerovo region; consultations with librarians and teachers; working out qualification tests and curriculum of the course; expertise of the course and its curriculum by several experts-librarians of the Institute on the Enhancing the Qualification of Teachers and others.

What is the main contents of the course? Let us characterize them briefly. The first complex constitutes the disciplines of humanitarian cycle which provide a high level of culturological and psychological training. These disciplines try to give not only knowledge but also to develop pedagogical thinking, that is, to set tasks and aims of work for different categories of students, to set priorities, find optimal ways of grappling with the problems. The main place is taken by such courses as "Social Pedagogics", "School Pedagogics", "Modern Pedagogical Technologies".

The special block of disciplines consists of the ideas of information culture, its structure, levels, historical development etc. The way of training this course is also studied here. Seminars and practical studies are oriented on getting special knowledge and abilities as to how to teach users, particularly in the library alongside with others. Central place is given to such courses as "Methodology and Techniques of Teaching Information Culture in School", "Methodology and Techniques of Training Information Culture in Libraries", the same courses intended for special educational institutions and higher educational establishments; "Technical Means of Teaching"; "Communicative Skills of the Teacher".

The course gives knowledge and skills for work within librarianship, bibliography and reference service, informatics. Thus, students are trained in literature and literary critics, information technologies; documents functioning, analytical work with information. Students also study age differences, children's literature and reading habits, ways and forms of satisfying information needs of certain groups and individuals. Training also comprises marketing and advertising activity foundations, directing and staging art.